Marriage visa expired 2 yrs ago whilst abroad now back in UK

A friend of my Brazilian partner has a most perplexing situation which I hope someone may have a solution to.

Persons Concerned
Brazilian Women.
Brazilian Child, she is 17 years old who is the womens daughter (she is 18 in July 2012).
UK man serving in the British Army.

Timeline is,
Brazil women lived in the UK on various student visas for a number of years prior to 2007.

Brazilian women married the UK man in 2007 (I think in the UK), she then travelled to Brazil and applied in Brazil for a marriage visa, along with a settlement visa for her daughter who had been previously living with her grandparents.

Women was granted 2 year marriage visa expiring in 2009. Her child was granted limited leave to enter visa to accompany her mother expiring also in 2009.

In 2008 the UK man got posted to Germany and takes the women and daughter to live with him in Germany. The women and daughter are given a NATO visa to come and go from Germany. They both have still got these visas valid until early 2012.

Before their marriage visa expired, they asked an adviser in the Army what to do about the visa and were told they did not need to do anything. Obviously this was bad advice.

Since the visa expired they had been back to the UK twice and each time the women and daughter were both stamped into the UK as visitors (usual 6 month limit, no recourse to work or public funds).

About a month ago the UK man was posted back to the UK and again he asked for advice from an army adviser who said it would be all right, but then started being very vague about it.

They all travelled together and entered the UK by ferry from France. They specifically told the immigration officer that they were not visiting, but moving back from Germany to live permanently together in the UK. The immigration officer was totally confused by the situation and compounded by the fact that the womens original marriage visa was in an old passport which was buried deep in their luggage. As they both had the same English surname he believed they were both married and let them through. Later they noticed that neither of the Brazilian passports had even been stamped by the IO.

So seems to me they don’t even have a 6 month visitor visa let alone any other type of visa to enter or be in the UK. All they have is the marriage visa which expired in 2009 and a current NATO visa valid only for Germany.

So do they,
1) Travel back to Brazil and apply for another marriage visa ?
2) Is it possible for them to travel back to Germany and apply for a marriage visa which might be cheaper for them ?
3) Is it possible to apply from within the UK ?, I think not but I hope I might be missing something here. They have now been married and lived together for more than 4 years, either in the UK or Germany.
4) What do they do about the fact that the IO has not stamped anything in their passports when they recently entered into the UK.

See also Chapter 15 - Armed forces and Part 7 - Other Categories (276E-276Q, 276R-276W, 276X-267AC, 276AD-276AF, 276AG-276AI).

Thanks for replying Vinny but I've scanned through the links and they seem to be more about foreign nationals in the British Army settling in the UK, i.e Gurkhas, etc. I could not find anything which would relate to their situation.

The person in the British Army is a settled British Citizen. Its his Brazilan wife and stepdaughter who have the problem. So do any speical rules apply for them to apply for indefinate leave to remain from the UK.

Specifically mother and daughter have an expired UK marriage visa (which expired whilst living in Germany under a NATO visa) but their marriage has subsisted for over 4 years. They were let into the UK by an IO at a ferry port a few weeks ago without even stamping their passports.

What are they supposed to do now as currently the mother cannot work, the daughter cannot attend college and they dont even know what their immigration status is beacuse the IO did not stamp their passports.

Apologies.

I think that they may apply for settlement visas from Germany.